India

It was an exciting day: Friday the 28th of August we inaugurated the new teacher`s house while celebrating a wonderful party with all the villagers and lots of friends from all over the place: it was a wonderful event and occasion to give the teacher`s house plus community hall to the people of Little Flower.

The latest pictures of the construction site, which will be completed by June! So are six apartments meant to serve as accommodation for new, qualified teachers, and a common room, the Community Hall, which is now still under construction. In our meetings was discussed intensively, which could be the next project with “basehabitat”.

I would also like to specially dedicate a post to the students, of their dynamism and colorfulness they bring into the life of the village and also into the everyday work.

The workers the students work together with in Little Flower, are entirely young men who were unemployed and children of leprous parents in the border region between India and Nepal. Alcohol and drugs, smuggling transactions at the border are very difficult factors influencing the village, unemployment and lack of prospects – as we know that in all regions of the world – the most fertile ground for slipping into crime and violence. –

The colorfulness and the hustle and bustle in the Khadi is an attraction in the village, and everyone likes to drop by! For me, there is always a must-attend event with the spinners – who then laugh a lot when my tricky spinning wheel always turns in the wrong direction –

The wheat fields are weeded daily, then later in the year the rice fields, too -, we see especially the women, meter by meter move through the fields. The weeds are welcome food for the goats and cows in the village.

While the students of Art University Linz / basehabitat spent five weeks building practice in Little Flower and thus initiated the last phase of the PHOOLNA project, which ushered the Community Hall in loam with bamboo construction, I was even accompanied by three traveling companions for a total of two weeks in the project.

It was an intense time, each marked by the most exciting, different perspectives, which Wonge Bergmann / Frankfurt

And already on the first day in Little Flower we started working on site. After a few preparations there we started the brick work. Since this work was going faster than we expected we decided to focus on the bamboo work. Also because Fatima –our bamboo expert – is here for a

Work is going really well in India. They are working on adobes, which should be dry until we arrive in February, and they are treating the freshly cut bamboo.
Furthermore the whole building has been plastered inside and outside!

It’s almost been a week since I arrived in Sunderpur. I was welcomed warmly and felt back home immediately.
The next day I was already on site, which looks incredible. The impression which the building is now conveying is really impressive and I am not surprised at all that they call it “raja ka ghar” (house of the king). Honestly I am a little jealous of the teachers who will move in here.